Making Your Home Healthy and Green
As parents the health and safety of our families is a top priority, yet it’s surprising how easy it is to neglect ways to protect them. There are many things to consider if you are planning to remodel, redecorate or even build a new home. One of these should be how to make healthy choices for your family in what you are planning on doing.
Homeowners need to realize how much their homes — carpets, paints, finishes, cleaning supplies, heating and air conditioning systems, fireplaces etc. — can affect their health.
Here are some ideas for making your home green and healthy at the same time.
Clean air helps you breathe easy:
Growing evidence tells us that indoor air can be more seriously polluted than outdoor air. With 90 percent of our time spent indoors, health risks from airborne pollutants inside the home may be much higher than we think.
Some common sources of indoor air pollution include cabinetry and insulation (formaldehyde), improperly vented fireplaces, and poorly installed or maintained heating and cooling systems or home appliances, such as gas ranges, stove hoods or water heaters.
Some things to consider when you are remodeling are installing hard-surface flooring rather than carpeting to protect indoor air for the long term. Think of how it smells after you install new carpeting in your home, is that chemical scent the air you want to breathe? If you decide to go with carpeting, you can now find products that meet air quality standards for low emissions through a Green Label program. And, ask for carpet manufacturers with recycling programs, as an estimated 5 billion pounds of carpet go to landfills annually because its synthetic components prevent easy recycling.
When planning to do some painting shop for paints that do not use volatile organic compounds, known as VOC’s. VOC’s are used in most paints, lacquers and cleaning supplies and emit gases with significant health effects. Low- or no-VOC paints (and cleaning products) are now widely available.
Quality contractors can help you find green and healthy products for you. The U.S. Green Building Council provides up-to-date information on safer and greener products and building techniques.
Conserving Energy:
One of the foundational elements of green building or remodeling should be energy conservation.
If you are building a new home, get your architect to design your house with energy consumption in mind. Maximize the benefits of natural daylight (so you’ll need fewer electric lights). Also consider passive ventilation, which will promote the flow of fresh air throughout your home when you need it. And, of course, install energy- and water-efficient appliances.
Some other easy ways to lower household energy use are replace regular light bulbs with compact fluorescents, programming your thermostat, plugging air leaks and upgrading your appliances to Energy Star products. New, energy-efficient windows can also significantly reduce energy used for heating and cooling older homes or apartment buildings, and there’s some evidence that double-paned windows can also reduce fire damage.
Green and Healthy Remodeling:
If you are updating your home or building a new one, you’ll be astounded at the array of green options available.
For instance there is bamboo flooring. It’s contemporary, durable and comes in a variety of finishes — and it’s not even wood. (Bamboo is actually a member of the grass family and grows like a weed). Cork and eucalyptus flooring have similar eco friendly qualities. Resources abound for other green flooring options, including reclaimed wood from rivers and lakes. Especially for historic homes, reclaimed wood can provide unmatched appeal.
If you prefer traditional wood, you can still go green by purchasing products that are made from woods that are responsibly managed, harvested and manufactured. Flooring, structural lumber, cabinets and a wide range of furnishings are available from suppliers nationwide that are manufactured with woods that are responsibly managed.
Green advantages as well can be found in cabinets, tile, plasters and countertops.
Cabinetry made without toxic glues and formaldehyde is widely available. It can also be finished with low-VOC paints and lacquers.
Tiles that are lead-free are also available, with significant recycled content.
And when it comes to countertops, the options are numerous, from recycled glass, concrete or plastic to finely made white oak butcher block.
Even wallpaper makers have introduced elegant grass cloth products with recycled backing paper.
So as you can see there are many things you can do to make healthy choices for your family when building a new home, remodeling or even redecorating. These are only a few. We will be talking about more things next time.
Ways to Conserve Water Around Your House
Water is a precious resource and when you are trying to Green Your Living it is one of the things that become very important to us. Even if you are not trying to go green yet it is still important. It is sometimes easy to forget about conserving this very important resource as for most of us it flows readily whenever we turn on a faucet. Yet water is vital to the environment, and conserving water helps our critical ecosystems, but saving water also saves you money. You don’t even have to make major lifestyle changes to conserve water in your home.
You can save water in the bathroom, kitchen, and laundry areas inside your home, as well as outdoors. There are 100’s of easy ways to accomplish this environmentally friendly task. Here are a few tips to get you started.
1. Fix any leaks promptly. It has been shown that leaking faucets and toilets account for 14 percent of all indoor water use, which can be gallons of water per person per day.
TIP: Put food coloring in your toilet tank. If it seeps into the toilet bowl without flushing, you have a leak. Fixing it can save up to 1,000 gallons a month. Don’t forget to check outdoor faucets, pipes and hoses for leaks as well.
2. Try using an osmosis or water purification system for your drinking water. This prevents you from having to buy and misuse bottled water. Often when bottled water is used, there is always some water left in the bottle that was then just thrown out. You are saving the landfill sites as well.
3. If you have an older toilet, say installed before 1980, try installing a toilet dam or filled bottle to save water during each flush. Make sure you’re not affecting any operating parts by this installation. You maybe should even consider installing a new water saving toilet that uses less than 1.6 gallons of water per flush.
4. Limit the length of showers you take by setting a time limit for yourself. Maybe take a bath instead. When taking a bath, avoid letting the cold water just run while you are waiting for the hot to warm up. Bucket it and save that cold water for use for watering plants, you can save an additional 200 to 300 gallons a month.
5. You can also limit the amount of water you are using every time you brush your teeth or wash your hands, by making sure the water is not left running while you’re brushing your teeth or scrubbing your hands.
6. Install a water saver showerhead. Look for models that save water without compromising the shower experience. Delta has one that actually changes the thermal dynamics of the water, and delivers larger water droplets while using 36 percent less water than a standard showerhead.
7. The next time you need new taps for your sink look for water-efficient faucets certified by the EPA’s WaterSense program. Some can save as much as 30 percent over a standard faucet.
8. Our lawns and flower beds account for 20 to 50 percent of all residential water use so choose drought-resistant and low water consuming plants. You need to find ways to conserve water but not at the expense of your plants dying! I think drip systems or soaker hoses are the best way to water plants. There is no reason to have water shooting up in the air the way it does when using a sprinkler. Also the best time to give plants a drink is in the evening, not in the morning. There is less evaporation in the cool of the night than during the heat of the day. Try using the bath water to water the plants. The plants won’t mind at all in fact they’ll thank you.
9. When cleaning the driveway or sidewalk use a broom instead of a hose and save up to 80 gallons of water each time.
So as you can see there are lots of ideas and the ideas above are just the beginning. The real thing is what are you going to do about it? Don’t put it off, start making changes today.